


Death

by HappinessIsBlau



Series: Fallout 4 Daily Writing Prompt Fills [37]
Category: Fallout 4
Genre: Character Study, F/M, Gen, Murder-Suicide, Suicide Attempt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-03
Updated: 2019-11-03
Packaged: 2021-01-21 09:01:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,446
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21296912
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HappinessIsBlau/pseuds/HappinessIsBlau
Summary: Jean-Luc Richard Dornan died in the 2260s.Deacon thought that, all things considered, Jean-Luc got off easy.
Relationships: Barbara/Deacon (Fallout)
Series: Fallout 4 Daily Writing Prompt Fills [37]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/752328
Comments: 2
Kudos: 7





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Forgive any inaccuracies/liberties taken here. I run a little fast and loose with dates and details sometimes, but I hope the overall intent is still obvious here. This goes along with several headcanons I have, mostly that James was in the Enclave. And it grew from there.

Jean-Luc Richard Dornan died in the 2260s. 

Deacon thought that, all things considered, Jean-Luc got off easy.

JL’s brother, James, was always the warm one. He was their mother’s favorite, although she would have said that she loved both of her sons equally. They both had her love of words and knowledge, but JL was poetic and James loved learning and science.

Like their father, JL loved strategy and James loved logic. Their father was a soldier -- one of the last “true Americans”, he would say, as the Enclave all did. He was cold but not cruel - except to those who deserved it.

That’s where James took issue. James was compassionate to all life, so James left his promising career as a young medical scientist to hook up with some Brotherhood idealists and tried to start a water purifier in the Jefferson Memorial and got himself gooified.

Well, that’s as good of a way to die as any.

While James was fighting the good fight, estranged from the Enclave presence that their father fought so hard to re-establish in the East after the Mariposa disaster in the West, Jean-Luc was a young and sulky officer. 

What else do you do but grow up to patrol? JL’d gotten in trouble for reading on duty repeatedly and therefore got the worst patrols, but fate has a way of working things out.

\--

The group seemed like escaped slaves. The Enclave usually didn’t care about what the locals got up to, since they were all heathens (James’ words rang in JL’s ears, screamed at their father the night that he left: “They are people and they deserve dignity and I’m not going to kill anyone for trying to make a life for themselves!”), but JL was drawn to them, dots on the landscape.

His power armor’s visor let him zoom in closer on the small group, but not so close as to make out details; three bald, tall people in very shabby clothes were trekking towards a rock big enough to stop some of the wind, at least from that direction, to camp. 

What a silly thing, being so close to danger and not knowing it. 

The patrol leader figured that real life target practice would be much more beneficial than the dented metal targets in the fourth level shooting range, so they were ordered to go for it. Ready, steady, aim, Jean-Luc, fire, Jean-Luc, your plasma rifle can’t be the only one that doesn’t go off, honey.

Fuck.

These people were not people. They seemed to be, but their insides were metal and robotic parts, like something out of a science fiction magazine. Their skin was rubbery and had seams but felt upsettingly lifelike when a piece was passed around later, after they’d brought all the broken pieces back to the lab at the base. It was like an Assaultron and a mannequin fucked and had the most unnerving and uncanny babies.

These things moved like people. When approached, Jean-Luc would swear that they had fear in their eyes. They were unarmed. They had their hands up. They wanted to surrender.

The Enclave does not take hostages. 

The Enclave is not merciful.

\--

Jean-Luc was not a brave man or an idealist like his brother, James. Jean-Luc took five more years of guilt for his maybe-murder to finally desert. Unlike James, Jean-Luc could not face their parents. He left a note.

“Sorry, mom. Sorry, pop. I’m going west to find myself. It’s 2260, we’re back at it again with free love and revolution, didn’t you know? Watch that Grapes of Wrath holotape again. I’m going to find gold or become a farmer.

All my love, Your Son,  
Jean-Luc “Call me Dickie” Dornan” 

\---

He met Barbara outside of New Reno. She was pretty as a poster with straight teeth and smooth skin, which he realized when her grin was aimed right at him. She was not a drinker, she said, as she appeared from nowhere and sat down beside him at the dive bar and plucking an ice cube out of whatever drink he had decided to order and putting it into her mouth with such a look in her eyes that he could have proposed to her on the spot.

After she pulled him out and kissed him silly, after spending three whole nights with him in her hotel room, after he decided that he’d died from a bad trip and somehow managed despite it all to get into heaven, she sobered him up and told him that she was a synth and she was here dropping off a bunch of others and she’d either have to kill him or he could help but he didn’t have any choices other than those two.

Jean-Luc would have said yes without the threat. This was his chance to make his wrongs right.

She told him that the synths that he and the other Enclave soldiers had murdered were second generation synths. She was new and soft and warm and full of revolution, and she was helping as many other synths as she could.

They were like Bonnie and Clyde except selfless.Like Vicki and Vance, actually, because they weren’t known at all. Jean-Luc found that he loved the cloak and dagger stuff. Barbara loved him more than she loved helping synths escape. She told him stories that she had memorized out of books, taught him French, told him about the brave star-explorer that was on holotapes that a kind old ghoul in DC had passed onto her -- the one that shared his name and who believed in the inherent good in people.

It seemed that no matter where he had been, she’d been there helping synths. Maybe she was just buttering him up. He could never tell when she was serious.

\---

Paradise doesn’t last forever. In fact, it only lasts until 2265 in this case. Jean-Luc didn’t have a luxurious life with his wife. They didn’t sleep often and they ate less. They were always going where no one else wanted to because those are the easiest places to hide synths. He stopped counting how many he helped, but the Institute didn’t.

Like the Enclave, there was no such thing as mercy from them.

It was some sort of divine parallel. He had murdered synths and thus been reborn. Hiding in the broom closet of an abandoned gas station as synths lurked around every corner, using their dumb, first generation sensors to try to figure out where Barbara and Jean-Luc and the escapees were.

Jean-Luc knew what needed to be done. Barbara always said that she’d rather die than go back to the Institute. He closed his eyes, said a prayer, and pulled the trigger four times. Once for JN-99, once for KX-30, and once for Barbara, and then one under his own chin.

Thus, the end of the tragic story of Jean-Luc Richard Dornan.

\---

As luck would have it, they were close enough to DC that something could be done. It was a miracle that someone had dragged him back to Rivet City, and a further miracle yet that Pinkerton had been able to fix his face and give him back full use with a very, very convincing, synth jaw, synthetic skin, and the work was seamless, as always.

Something in his gut told him to go north, so go north this now nameless man did. He had skills and knowledge and knew what synths were and how to help them. 

John D was born in Boston, Massachusetts, in the fall of 2265, at the healthy age of 33. Shit got better for a time. Shit got worse after. John D became Deacon. Deacon met Bullseye. The rest, as they say, was history.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter 2 is absolutely written for my own self-indulgence and includes my Lone Wanderer, Cynthia. No need to read unless you're irresistibly curious -- but since it's part of the story and I intend to post more Fallout 3 here anyway, I figured that I'd include it.

One morning, Deacon was on his post-coffee morning walk. Still happily paranoid, he found himself checking locks and fences, escape routes and the barrier walls around Sanctuary. A young woman with an elderly mutt walked to the gate and, from the shadows, he watched her walk through.

She looked like James. Spitting image, in fact, save for her dark skin and her hair which were obviously from her mother. He’d heard that she’d finished what James started, that wonderful warrior girl. Something in his heart beamed and broke in equal measure. 

“I heard your goddess-queen killed the bastard who killed my wife and stole my airship,” she announced to him when he’d let himself be seen. His heart lurched -- his suspicions were confirmed. There was only one Dornan left and she was standing right in front of him.

“You look just like your father,” he told her, “you’ve got his eyes, you know.”

She smiled.

“So do you.”


End file.
